


Lie To Me

by gilligankane



Category: Glee
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-18
Updated: 2010-02-18
Packaged: 2017-11-17 08:26:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/549573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gilligankane/pseuds/gilligankane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her mom's honesty is what starts this whole thing, she decides later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lie To Me

If there’s one thing about her mom that Elizabeth will praise – and despise, sometimes – for the rest of her life, it would have to be her honesty.

Her mom has never lied to her; never sugar-coated anything.

There are times when that sucks – like finding out about the Tooth Fairy, and where babies really come from too early in life, and how she  _really_  looks in that one pair of jeans.

Then there are times it doesn’t – like finding out exactly why she wasn’t allowed to date James Hilton, or why she has one of the youngest moms out of all her friends.

 _Honesty is a trait to be admired, Elizabeth_ , her mom tells her over and over again. When she asks why, she gets a tight smile and six softly whispered words: “ _People get hurt when you lie.”_

It’s something her mom and her Uncle Finn argue about constantly. Uncle Finn thinks her mom is taking away her childlike innocence; her mom tells her Uncle that kids have to grow up eventually and while there’s no shame in having an imagination, but there’s also reality to consider.

Her Uncle gets angry and leaves, but her mom smiles at her and tells her to come out from behind the door; they’ll make hot chocolate with extra marshmallows and have a dance party in the living room.

Her mom’s honesty is what starts this whole thing, she later decides. If her mom hadn’t said anything, hadn’t answered her questions, Elizabeth never would have tried to find  _her_.

\---

When she’s seven, she grabs a picture off the mantle – after grabbing a chair and climbing up onto it – and thrusts it in front of her mom at the breakfast table, almost knocking over the cup of coffee in her way.

She asks her mom who the other woman in the picture is. Her mom looks down, sighs a little and tells her, “That’s your other mommy.”

When Elizabeth asks where her other mommy is, her mom looks her in the eye and says, “She left.”

\---

Her Daddy – who tells her the truth always, because “ _You’re the only girl who matters in my life, Bug, and I’ll never lie to you_  – doesn’t like to talk about it, even when she pouts.

 _It_ , she writes in her journal,  _is anything that has to do with me, Mom and my other mom_.  _He says it’s a chapter in his life he doesn’t like to re-read, because he’s burned his bridges and rebuilt them and he and Mom are fine now._

She needed her mom to write it first – not that she tells her mom what the words are for – but she’s very good at copying letters.

She bites the end of her pen, pauses – because it’s late and she’s supposed to be sleeping – and then scribbles a few more words.

_I think he stole that from a song, but he loves me and he says he loves Mom, even if they don’t **love**  love each other, so I’m okay with that, I guess._

It doesn’t stop her from asking, every chance she gets.

\---

As her life goes on, Elizabeth tries to put the pieces together. There’s a special notebook, hidden away in the box under the desk that her dad built her – a secret place only the two of them know about – and in it is all she’s learned about this mysterious other mother.

Her mom almost catches her once; her dad finds it twice, when he comes to make repairs on the desk – she stops him from sanding down the dent on one of the legs because, she tells him, every nick and mark is a reminder of who she used to be. He smiles oddly and kisses her on the forehead, but stays for dinner like always.

The notebook isn’t really anything special. There’s a copy of the picture on the mantle taped to the inside, and some facts in a bulleted list on the first page with minimal information she’s managed to pull out of her mom, her Uncle Finn and her dad. Stuff like name, birthday, hair color, eye color; all of it stuff she could get looking at a driver’s license, and most of the things she learns, she finds off the internet or in the yearbooks her mom keeps stashed in the attic.

When she finds the yearbooks, nine years old and itching to know everything she can about this mom she’s never met, she’s almost afraid to open them. They’re in pristine condition – Elizabeth’s sure they haven’t ever been opened – but she pulls the pages apart excitedly, finding people she knows and laughing at the hair and the clothes.

A few pages later, she stops.

There she is, as a baby, on the forty-seventh page, nestled in the arms of her other mother, something called a Glee club surrounding her, her mom smiling down at her, one armed wrapped around her other mom’s shoulders.

She’s not sure who these other people are, so she copies their names down letter for letter and puts them in her pocket.

She’ll ask her dad, the next time he comes over.

\---

He stares blankly at her scribbled writing before looking up and glancing around the room filled with party guests.

“What do you want me to do?”

Elizabeth huffs and points at the words, tapping her pen against the notebook page with a frown. “I want to know who these people are.”

He frowns. “Where did you get this from?”

“I copied it. Who are they?”

“They’re just names,” her dad says, pushing the paper back at her.

“I know that,” she huffs. “I want to know who they are.”

Her dad grabs her around the waist and lifts her onto his knees. She settles against his chest because she’s used to it, and he traps her in his arms, bouncing his knee twice before going still. “Listen, Bug,” he says softly into her ear. Across the room, her mom looks up and smiles at them. Her dad waves and then keeps talking. “You’re going to learn that there are just some things you need to leave alone, okay? Look around you. You have a good family, a big family who loves you. You don’t need her.”

He stands up and she slides off his lap. She looks up at him and he leans over, kissing her quickly on the forehead. “Leave it alone, Bug,” he whispers.

She doesn’t say she will. She doesn’t say she won’t.

She nods and he seems to think he’s won, but she’s already in her head, thinking about a way to find out everything she wants to know without anyone else’s help.

\---

Her life explodes, kind of.

She turns ten, and then eleven, and then twelve and she’s playing sports and dancing and singing and spending her weekends in Cleveland where her dad moved to.

She turns thirteen and starts high school and joins Glee and becomes a Cheerio and the notebook stays in her desk, unopened, because her one mom is enough for her right now and her life is just too busy to be playing Nancy Drew and following after a woman who didn’t bother to stick around in the first place.

Seven years go by without her even really thinking about it.

It’s not until her Family Life class her junior year that she even remembers that she never really figured out the mystery of “the other mother”.

So when she gets caught, that’s what she blames it on.

\---

It’s a classic trick she learned from the movies: her mom thinks she’s at her dad’s; her dad thinks she’s at her mom’s.

Instead of getting on the bus to Cleveland – something she’s glad she convinced her mom to let her start doing when she was younger, so it doesn’t seem weird now – Elizabeth takes a taxi from the bus station to the airport and gets on the 11:30am flight to San Francisco.

When the plane takes off, she wonders, briefly, how much trouble she’s going to be in, and if this is even worth it.

\---

The address on the scrap of paper in her hand has her standing outside of an office building; a tall one with glass windows and a door in the front that spins around and around.

She hangs around outside for an hour or two – it’s cool in Lima, but the sun here feels nice on her skin.

When her watch beeps – its 4:30 now –she lifts off the bench she’s been camped out and pushes through the revolving door, looking up at the ridiculously high ceiling. She could probably fit McKinley and her house and her dad’s apartment in her if she stacked them one on top of the other.

“Can I help you?” The woman behind the desk isn’t even looking at her, but Elizabeth leans over the countertop and smiles charmingly, the way her dad taught her too.

“I’m looking for Silas and Son?”

“Seventh floor, take the elevators on the right,” the woman says dully, pointing off to the side.

Elizabeth finds the elevators and when she gets on one, she’s glad she’s alone. Her hands are starting to shake and her foot is tapping out some nonsensical rhythm and she’s not sure why she’s here anymore; this is a stupid idea.

It’s too late, though, because there’s a  _ding_  and the elevator doors are opening and she’s facing the double doors leading to Silas and Son and the secretary has caught sight of her and is smiling at her.

“Hi there,” she says brightly, much more cheery than the woman downstairs.

Elizabeth doesn’t smile charmingly; she can’t get her mouth to do much more than open. “I’m trying to find someone,” she stammers.

The secretary smiles a little wider, a little more condescendingly. “Well, I’ll need to know who you’re looking for, dear.”

She’s about to hand over the piece of paper with the name scribbled on it, but there’s heels clacking behind her and a sharp voice speaking over hers.

“Nancy, I need a number from you.”

Behind the desk, Nancy immediately sits up and nods a few times more than she needs to.

A folder is slapped down on the countertop next to her and Elizabeth flinches reflexively before turning to look at the woman suddenly at her side, towering over her – though, Elizabeth thinks, it’s probably the heels she’s wearing.

The woman – with long, dark hair and tan skin and legs that even Elizabeth can appreciate, objectively – taps on foot impatiently and when she notices Elizabeth staring, turns to face her with an eerie calm.

“Can I help-”

The rest of the woman’s sentence dies off and her mouth drops a little.

“Here you go, Ms. Lopez,” Nancy says almost inaudibly, placing a piece of paper on top of the file folder. “Anything else I can get you?”

Ms. Lopez turns towards Nancy violently, jabbing a finger at Elizabeth. “Who is this?”

Nancy shrugs helplessly. “I didn’t get a chance to ask.”

Ms. Lopez isn’t even listening to her though. “Who are you,” she asks again, this time directed at Elizabeth, her pointer finger jabbing into Elizabeth’s shoulder.

She opens her mouth to answer, but Ms. Lopez’s finger is moving off her shoulder and across her jaw, lifting her head just a little, tipping it back so she’s staring into dark eyes. The finger ghosts across her cheekbone and up across the bridge of her nose, running across her browline.

A part of her thinks that maybe she should take a step back, but there’s something about this woman that’s familiar, so she stands still, willing herself not to breath.

“ _God_ ,” the woman breathes out. It breaks whatever spell Elizabeth is under and she steps back quickly, wrapping her arms around herself.

A tan hand hangs between them.

“You look  _just_  like her,” Ms. Lopez is saying. “Well, except your eyes. You have Puck’s eyes. But  _God_.”

Then that tan hand is wrapping long fingers around her wrist and pulling and she’s being dragged between cubicles and past offices and at the end of a long hallway, Ms. Lopez comes to an abrupt stop and Elizabeth is staring at a nameplate, gold and impressive.

 _Quinn Fabray_.

She’s read the name before; doodled it into that stupid notebook she’s got tucked away in the backpack she’s wearing; in that yearbook in the attic; on the plaques at school.

 _Quinn Fabray_.

She’s heard that name before, when she first started this detective thing, and her mom and her dad argued about it all night in hushed tones and forced whispers.

 _Quinn Fabray_.

Ms. Lopez is turning the handle and Elizabeth is starting think this is a terrible idea, but she’s always had a problem with making good decisions like these and she’s always been in hot water before she’s decided she wants out and it’s always too late, just like it is now, because Ms. Lopez is turning the handle and the door is opening and she’s being pushed inside.

The door shuts and she feels like she’s trapped and she really wants her mom.

\---

There’s a big desk in a corner of the room, but the chair is turned to face the window and from where she’s standing, she can only see feet.

“Quinn,” Ms. Lopez says loudly.

The woman –  _Quinn Fabray_  – doesn’t turn, but one long arm comes out of the side of the chair, with one finger extended and they’re being told to wait a minute.

Ms. Lopez doesn’t wait, though, and she crosses the room in six seconds, leaning down to whisper furiously and the chair spins around quickly.

For the first time in her life, Elizabeth is face to face with the woman who carried her for eight months and fourteen days.

“Santana,” Quinn Fabray says shakily. From where she’s standing, Elizabeth can see that her knuckles are white and her hand is gripping the armrest of the chair. “What is she doing here?”

“She was at the front desk,” Santana says calmly. “I thought you might want to deal with this on your own. Quietly,” she adds as an afterthought, nodding her head in their direction before slipping out into the hallway.

Elizabeth stands motionless, breathless. She’s not sure what to do, what to say, how to move, but when she goes to open her mouth, Quinn beats her to it.

“So, you’re Elizabeth.”

Elizabeth nods.

“Elizabeth Puckerman.”

Elizabeth shakes her head. “Elizabeth Berry. Puckerman is my dad’s name, but I took my mom’s name.”

Something in the woman on the other side of the desk seems to spark. “Elizabeth Berry? Your mom’s name,” she trails off for a moment and then, “You’re Rachel Berry’s daughter?”

Elizabeth sits a little taller in her seat and straightens her shoulders, eyes narrowing. “Got a problem with that?”

Quinn Fabray is off in her own world though. “I told Rachel not to, I told her to give, I thought she,” she rambles, looking around the room wildly before coming back to Elizabeth. “I told her to give you to Puck when I left.”

“My mom and dad have joint custody.”

“I told her to give you up.”

“Well she didn’t,” Elizabeth says, pulling back a little at the look in Quinn Fabray’s eyes. “I live with my mom and I go to my dad’s on weekends.”

She pulls back into her seat even more when two palms slap flat against the desk. “She’s  _not_  your mother.”

“Yes she is,” Elizabeth hisses, standing up and taking a step forward. It’s satisfying when Quinn Fabray takes a step back. “She is my mother. She’s the one who raised me. She taught me how to ride a bike, she taught me my ABC’s,  _she_  told me bedtime stories.”

“ _I’m your mother_ ,” Quinn says, her words breaking off.

Elizabeth sneers. “You’re an anonymous donor, as far as I’m concerned. And I never should have come here.”

It’s unraveling too quickly. She wanted to know her birth mother; the woman she looks just like, but she met her and now she wants to forget that Quinn Fabray ever existed. Her mom’s voice is ringing through her head, singing “ _I told you so_ ” over and over again and she can feel a burn behind her eyes. She wants to call her mom and go home and have hot chocolate and forget about the picture on the mantle and burn the notebook because her dream life isn’t turning out the way she wanted it to.

“Leave.”

Quinn is pointing at Elizabeth; talking to Elizabeth; telling Elizabeth to go home and  _yes_ , Elizabeth was never meant to fit into this woman’s life.

Elizabeth gets to the door and only looks up because the metal on the picture frame catches her eye. She steps a little closer, hand still wrapped around the doorknob, and studies the picture.

It’s a picture of Quinn and some other people sitting on the steps of a white house with blue shutters. There’s a little girl in Quinn’s lap with honey-gold hair and a little boy with a matching smile standing at her side. A tall man with bright blue eyes has his arm wrapped around Quinn’s shoulder, smiling at the camera.

Quinn looks happy, sitting on the steps of her American Dream home with her American Dream family, and even if Elizabeth squeezes her eyes shut and tries to fit her mom and her dad and her into the picture, she can’t.

It was a mistake to come here because Quinn Fabray has her own family now, a better family probably, and Elizabeth doesn’t fit into the equation; she doesn’t think she ever did.

The door is pulled open under her grasp and Santana steps in blocking Elizabeth’s view of the woman who looks just like her. “Quinn, don’t do this.”

Quinn doesn’t even look like she cares Santana was clearly listening to at least part of their conversation. “Don’t tell me what to do. I told her to leave.” She stands and looks past Santana at Elizabeth. “I told you to leave.”

She finds her voice, somewhere underneath her nerve. “I’m leaving,” she says hoarsely. “Don’t worry, I’m leaving.”

So she does.

\---

She turns the doorknob and steps back into the hallway and is at the revolving doors before that tan hand is wrapping itself around her again; her shoulder this time. “You’re not leaving.”

“I am.”

Santana shakes her head and pushes until Elizabeth is sitting down outside in the quad, on the same bench where Elizabeth waited to see the woman who gave birth to her. “You can’t,” she says, her voice a whisper.

“She doesn’t want me here. I don’t want to be here.”

Santana sighs and looks towards the busy street.

“Do you know my mom?” Elizabeth asks abruptly.

“I’ve known her since grade school. We’ve been best-”

“No,” Elizabeth interrupts, shaking her head. “Do you know my mom Rachel? Rachel Berry?”

Santana blinks a few times. “Rachel Berry is your-”

Elizabeth glares. “Do you know her or not?”

“I knew her back in high school.”

“If she were me, right now,” Elizabeth proposes, studying Santana’s face, “what would she do?”

“I haven’t seen Rachel since freshman-”

“If she were me what would she do?” Elizabeth asks again.

Santana sighs again, but pulls one leg up under her and settles on the bench facing Elizabeth.

“The Rachel Berry  _I_  knew,” she says quietly, “would have marched back into the office and given Quinn a piece of her mind.”

The Rachel Berry Elizabeth knows would still do the same thing.

“And  _her_?” Elizabeth asks, the two words sticking to the back of her throat. “What would  _she_  do?”

Santana goes quiet and when she still hasn’t spoken after a few minutes, Elizabeth thinks that maybe she never heard the question. She opens her mouth to ask again, but Santana touches the back of Elizabeth’s hand lightly and shakes her head.

Another minute later, she says, “Quinn would run. Quinn always ran.” Santana snorts mockingly. “Quinn is still running.”

It’s all Elizabeth needs to hear. She stands, pulling her backpack tighter around her shoulders and when Santana tries to reach for her hand, Elizabeth pulls away, walking backwards in the direction she came from.

“I guess we have that in common then, huh?”

\---

On the plane, she doesn’t let herself break down; she doesn’t hide in the bathroom and cry; she doesn’t tear out all the pages of the notebook and crumple them into tiny balls that she shoves back into her backpack in ruins.

If she does any of those things, though, she won’t ever admit to them.

\---

Her mom picks her up at the airport and for the first time in her life, Elizabeth wishes her mom would yell at her.

The first hour of the car ride is eerily silent until a cell phone display light flashes through the darkness of the car. Her mom picks it up on the third ring, one shoulder pressed against her ear as she continues steering.

“Hi.”

There’s garbled noise and Elizabeth peeks over, but her mom pays her no attention.

“Yes, Noah, I have her. I’m not bringing her to your apartment, I’m bringing her home.” A pause and then, “Yeah, because it’s my fault she pulled this on _both_  of us, Noah. No.” Elizabeth can’t make out the words, but her dad’s voice is getting louder. “I don’t know either.” Her mom glances over at her briefly and then looks back at the road. “I haven’t asked her yet.”

She hears a clear “ _Why not_?” echo through the car.

“Because I haven’t talked to her about it yet, Noah. I don’t know what to say to her right now.”

Her mom sighs heavily and Elizabeth feels like shrinking into her seat.

“Noah,” she says quietly, her voice weary. “I’ll call you tomorrow after I talk to her, okay?”

It must be enough for her dad because her mom says “ _goodnight_ ” into the phone and snaps it shut, letting it drop into her lap.

The inside of the car is quiet again until her mom opens her mouth. “What  _the hell_  were you thinking?” she asks angrily.

“I just wanted to meet her,” she answers contritely. “That’s all.”

“When your father called and asked why you weren’t on the train,” her mom trails off. “Jesus, Elizabeth, I thought something  _awful_  happened to you.”

She says “ _it did”_  so quietly she thinks her mom might not have heard her, but there’s a hand pulling the curtain of her bangs back, tucking them around her ear and smoothing down her shirt around her shoulder.

“What happened, sweetie?”

She bites her bottom lip and looks out the window and tries her best to swallow the dry feeling in her throat. “She’s not who I thought she would be,” she finally says. “I met Santana, too, whoever she is.”

Elizabeth isn’t sure why she says that, but she figures that if she talks about someone else, she won’t have to talk about Quinn.

Her mom makes a snorting kind of noise. “Santana Lopez, huh? Is she still a bitch?”

Elizabeth frowns. “No. She was the one who saw me first. She knew who I was.” Her mom’s hand moves through her hair again and she calms down; she always does whenever her mom does this. “She said,” she stutters, unsure and not specifying which  _she_  she’s talking about, “she said that you and Dad were supposed to give me up when Quinn left.”

Her mom’s breath hitches at the name  _Quinn_ , but she exhales through her nose and keeps running her hand through Elizabeth’s hair. “We were,” she says dully. “She told me she was leaving and that I should call the couple in Denver who wanted you when you first born. That, or I should give you to Puck and he should give you up for adoption. But I couldn’t,” she says, asking Elizabeth’s unanswered question. “Neither of us could. She left and we took one look at you and decided that the two of us could do it on our own. You weren’t old enough to remember her and she was never that,” she trails off, pausing before she says, carefully, “close to you.”

Elizabeth thinks that her mom must be some kind of special to be  _that_  nice about a woman who did nothing but break her heart in two pieces; did nothing but break their family into pieces.

“So we petitioned the courts, sorted through the legal mess and I adopted you and Noah and I agreed to joint custody,” her mom continues. “And no, I don’t regret it.”

“I wasn’t going to ask that,” Elizabeth says defensively.

Her mom smiles softly, the glint of her teeth fading as the car on the opposite side of the road continues past them.

“No, you weren’t. But I wanted to tell you anyway.”

Elizabeth reaches forward and fiddles with the radio knob, turning it off when she gets nothing but white noise. “I’m sorry,” she whispers.

At the next stoplight, her mom leans over and kisses her temple, her mouth lingering against her skin. “It’s okay,” her mom says just as quietly. “You came back home, where you belong, and I’m still upset with you, but I think we’ll leave it alone for now.” She pulls back as the light turns green. “How about hot chocolate and mini marshmallows? I think we might need to pick some up, but I’m sure we can manage that. Besides,” she says, smirking as she looks at Elizabeth out of the corner of her eye, “there are going to be a lot of nights in from now on, young lady.”

She doesn’t even care she’s going to be grounded for  _forever_ , because her mom is right: she’s home now, where she really does belong.

\---

They pull into the driveway and her mom shuts the car off. Elizabeth reaches for the door handle and she almost opens the door but her mom’s touching her arm, holding her in place.

“Elizabeth,” she says, her voice breaking the name into three parts.

Elizabeth turns back in her seat and stares at her mom, but she can’t be her mom, because her mom doesn’t ever look like this: like she’s breaking and a few words can either put her back together or break her even further.

“Did she,” her mom starts, pausing before she tries again, “Did she look happy.”

If there’s one thing about her mom that Elizabeth will praise – and despise, sometimes – for the rest of her life, it would have to be her honesty.

Her mom has never lied to her; never sugar-coated anything and she taught Elizabeth to do that same.

She taught Elizabeth that honesty is the best policy and that lies only ever hurt people and no, she never explained why – her dad once said something about Babygate and Elizabeth never understood the reference and when she asked her Uncle Finn he only shook his head and said that there was a time when they were all just lying to each other and too many people got hurt – but Elizabeth took it at face value, because her mom never gave her a reason to do otherwise.

So when Elizabeth opens her mouth, the truth on the tip of her tongue – that  _yes_ , Quinn did look happy with her new family; without them – she’s surprised when she swallows and something different comes out.

“No,” she says quietly, the words echoing off the windshield.

She sighs in relief when her mom’s eyes flash and then return to their normal brown because she picked the word that put her mom back together again.

“C’mon then, kiddo,” she says, ruffling Elizabeth’s hair. “I’ll let you pick the first movie.”

If there’s one thing her mom has taught her about, it would have to be honesty.

It’s taken her until now to realize that sometimes people don’t want to really hear the truth after all.


End file.
